Like this:

“Some things, and some people, are written across your soul in permanent ink.”

Book: The Lovely Reckless

Author: Kami Garcia

Blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Frankie Devereux would do anything to forget the past. Haunted by the memory of her boyfriend’s death, she lives her life by one dangerous rule: Nothing matters. At least, that’s what Frankie tells herself after a reckless mistake forces her to leave her privileged life in the Heights to move in with her dad—an undercover cop. She transfers to a public high school in the Downs, where fistfights don’t faze anyone and illegal street racing is more popular than football.

Marco Leone is the fastest street racer in the Downs. Tough, sexy, and hypnotic, he makes it impossible for Frankie to ignore him—and how he makes her feel. But the risks Marco takes for his family could have devastating consequences for them both. When Frankie discovers his secret, she has to make a choice. Will she let the pain of the past determine her future? Or will she risk what little she has left to follow her heart?

My thoughts:

To be honest, my first thought after reading this book was about Katie McGarry’s Crash Into You (Fabulous book, by the way). From the surface, the books look similar. Rich girl who doesn’t get along with her family meets rough, promiscuous, “dangerous” boy who’s a great racer. She stops being judge-mental about him and his friends,and family. They bond and friendship turns into something more complicated. The star-crossed lovers get involved in crime.

To make this different, Garcia covers much more. It doesn’t work well. Along with romance, this book attempts to tackle issues like mourning, moving on and unhealthy relationships (as may be obvious from the blurb). Somewhere in between, she slips in standard warnings about addictions and praises close girl friendships. The resulting novel seems cliched, almost insultingly simple analyses of issues that deserve more thought and sensitivity.

Each character is a stereotype. There’s the main character, Frankie, a rich, traumatized girl with a family that doesn’t understand her, and friends who have drifted apart. The inspiration for the love interest probably came from a stock-photo labelled “hot bad-boy”. Of course, he has an instantaneous soft-spot for Frankie. Obviously, he has a cute, traumatized sister that makes Frankie realize that she has it good and that she and Marco ‘belong together’. I kept waiting for the twist because I thought I knew what it was: Since, Frankie blocked out the memory of her ex being beaten to death in front of her for drug related issues, and Marco had friends who were involved in drug related crime, I thought the conflict of the story would have been Marco knowing who killed Frankie’s ex and not telling her about it.
Yeah, no such twist came.

The romance was frankly super unhealthy; my head’s still spinning from the insta-love. Though this book supposedly features street-racing, the fastest thing in this book is the romance. Frankie and Marco went from zero to hundred in about 2 seconds flat. Like most spontaneous teen relationships in YA books, it’s not very healthy. Marco’s awfully possessive and Frankie seems to be okay with it, even flattered. Considering these characters are high-school students, I want to scream at them; high-school boys really shouldn’t be so domineering.

Moving onto story-line. If you’re excited about reading this book because you saw the words “street”and “racing”, you will be disappointed. There’s maybe two scenes and they’re not very descriptive. This book has a terrible plot and it deserves to be spoiled. But, just in case the hundreds of favorable reviews on Goodreads have convinced you to read this book (I maintain that I received a different copy of the book), I won’t spoil it for you. Instead, I’ll just tell you that the main conflict in this book revolves around the “Adults are clueless/evil” trope that’s pretty standard to the YA genre.

Now that I’ve complained so much about this book, you want to know if there is anything redeemable about this book. Well…I liked Cruz. She’s Marco’s friend and befriends Frankie. Though raised by an abusive father, she makes sure she protects her sisters (even if she has to do some stupid, dangerous stuff to do that). She’s so confident about her place in the world, I am amazed by her strength. Garcia probably should have written about Cruz. The writing style wasn’t too bad either. Despite all these issues, I managed to make it to the end of the book.

Like this:

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

-Bertrand Russell

On a scale of 1-10, how horrified would you be to have all your reading made public? 1 means you’re an exhibitionist who would enjoy having your reading list go out to random strangers. If you were a 10, you would hail the mere thought as the apocolypse.

On that scale, I’m very comfortable being number 8. The idea of my reading list going public makes me want to curl up in fetal position and never come out of my room. I can’t see why anyone would ever want their acquaintances to know what they read. I mean, I’m sure there are intellectuals who read Dante’s Inferno and feel the need to toss it into other readers’ faces. I know certain people who are in the middle of War and Peace ( have been for over a year) and wouldn’t mind you thinking they’re a lot smarter than they actually are.

But for the most part, most people will share different parts of their reading list with other people. I have classics ready on the tongue when people ask for favorite books, while I swoon over chick-lit and romance privately with close friends. And I’ll probably take some of the darkest, most taboo books I’ve read to my grave.

At the same time, it’s hard to think of reading as personal as say, your social security number or your sex life. Don’t get me wrong —it’s up there on the list. For example, I’d rather share my blood type, phone number and weight than a comprehensive list of what I read. But what is the point of reading if you can’t fangirl or rant about it later? One of the highlights of my life is probably having a captive audience of 800 listen to me ramble on about the Golden Compass series. For a few glorious minutes, I bubbled over with enthusiasm as I described how every read brought something new to my attention.

About a year back, Goodreads released a feature which allowed you to add the books you were currently reading to your email signature. They were surprised it didn’t really take off.

Cute idea but I read too much naughty stuff to add something to my email signature. I can just imagine sending an email to my dad with a cover of a shirtless man!
-D.G.